Category Archives: Science Fiction

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke. Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Suicidal ideation

Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

Can you stop a murder after it’s already happened? It is midnight on the morning of Halloween, and Jen anxiously waits up for her 18-year-old son, Todd, to return home. But worries about his broken curfew transform into something much more dangerous when Todd finally emerges from the darkness. As Jen watches through the window, she sees her funny, seemingly happy teenage son stab a total stranger. She doesn’t know who the victim is, or why Todd has committed such a devastating act of violence. All she knows is that her life, and Todd’s, have… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Suicide mentioned
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder by stabbing
  • Kidnapping of a child
  • Blackmail

Watch Me by Tahereh Mafi

James Anderson had a plan. Or half of one. All that matters is that he managed to do what his older brother, the famous Aaron Warner Anderson, never did: infiltrate Ark Island, the last refuge of The Reestablishment. In the past decade no outsider has breached the stronghold of the authoritarian regime, but James is in. In a prison cell, sure, but as far as James is concerned, a win is a win. It’s been ten years since the fall of The Reestablishment. Ten years since the notorious duo — Juliette Ferrars and… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  • Graphic murder
  • Blackmail

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson

In 2267, Earth has just begun to recover from worldwide ecological disasters. Minh is part of the generation that first moved back up to the surface of the Earth from the underground hells, to reclaim humanity’s ancestral habitat. She’s spent her entire life restoring river ecosystems, but lately the kind of long-term restoration projects Minh works on have been stalled due to the invention of time travel. When she gets the opportunity take a team to 2000 BC to survey the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, she jumps at the chance to uncover the secrets of the shadowy think tank that controls time travel technology.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Body horror

Dead Happy by Josh Silver

Friends. Welcome to Elmhallow. Seb, along with a select group of participants, finds himself washed up on an isolated island called Elmhallow, under the guardianship of a mysterious couple. As the experiment steps up another level, Seb is forced to team up with Eleanor once more. But where is Finn? And what does HappyHead have in store for them next?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Eugenics
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Drug use recounted
  • Blood & injury depiction
  • Emesis mentioned
  • Murder & torture
  • Physical assault
  • Animal death & cruelty

HappyHead by Josh Silver

We are in an epidemic. An epidemic of unhappiness. Friends, here is the good news: HappyHead has the answer. When Seb is offered a place on a radical retreat designed to solve the national crisis of teenage unhappiness, he is determined to change how people see him and make his parents proud. But as he finds himself drawn to the enigmatic Finn, Seb starts to question the true nature of the challenges they must undergo. The deeper into the programme the boys get, the more disturbing the assessments become, until it’s clear there may be no escape…

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia & outing mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption & drug use mentioned
  • Overdose mentioned
  • Emesis
  • Animal death

In the Wreckage by Hailey Turner

Captain Jamie Callahan got a new lease on life when he survived a chemical attack that turned him into a metahuman. Now he leads Alpha Team, the Metahuman Defense Force’s top strike group, a position that puts him at odds with his elite political family. Determined to do his duty, Jamie’s commitment to his team creates a loneliness that is increasingly difficult to ignore. Staff Sergeant Kyle Brannigan is a sniper with secrets. Seconded to Alpha Team, he finds himself torn between his desire for Jamie and his desperate need to fly under the radar. But Jamie is everything Kyle… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Drugging
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) & trauma
  • Vivisepulture (being buried alive)
  • Terrorism
  • Military warfare

In the Solace by Hailey Turner

Colonel Liam Wessex is happy to see Jamie Callahan and Kyle Brannigan finally married, but it leaves him wishing his own life wasn’t such a mess. With his classified identity revealed to the British public, Liam struggles with the transition into civilian life. When MI6 Agent Oliver Archer stumbles back into his world, Liam has a second chance to make things right between them, if only the prickly agent would let him close again. Oliver thought he’d done enough to cut Liam out of his life for good after a disastrous night together during their youth. But when terrorists… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Torture
  • Bombing
  • Electrocution
  • Kidnapping
  • Car accident
  • Terrorism
  • Bullying mentioned

In the Shadows by Hailey Turner

Staff Sergeant Alexei Dvorkin has a history with spies that typically ends with most of them dead. But Agent Sean Delaney is proving to be the frustrating exception to every one of Alexei’s rules of engagement. As part of Alpha Team’s long-running mission to stop an enemy metahuman, the two are constantly forced to work together, resulting in a simmering attraction neither can ignore. When the MDF tasks them with finding evidence of criminal wrongdoing against the owner of a private military company, Sean knows… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Terrorism
  • Kidnapping & hostage situation

In the Blood by Hailey Turner

Captain Jamie Callahan is running out of time in his efforts to outsmart an enemy metahuman. His father’s presidential campaign is ramping up, and Jamie’s top secret identity as a metahuman himself is at risk of being revealed by the enemy, to say nothing of his secret relationship with Staff Sergeant Kyle Brannigan. As Alpha Team’s long-running mission gets derailed in the worst way possible, Staff Sergeant Alexei Dvorkin discovers the enemy is playing for keeps, and neither he nor Agent Sean Delaney are in any… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Threats of rape
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) & trauma
  • Graphic torture, including waterboarding, dental torture, skinning, and beating
  • Erotic asphyxia
  • Chemical bombing
  • Terrorism